Keynote Speaker

Zulfikar Hirji is presently Associate Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at York University, Toronto. He received his DPhil from the University of Oxford (Social and Cultural Anthropology), MPhil from University of Cambridge (Islamic History), and B.A. (Joint Honours, Religious Studies and Anthropology) from McGill University. Professor Hirji’s academic research focuses on the social and cultural expressions of Muslims in historical and contemporary contexts with a particular focus on Muslim communities of the Western Indian Ocean.

He is the co-author and co-editor of The Ismailis: An Illustrated History (Azimuth Editions, 2008), editor of Diversity and Pluralism in Muslim Contexts (IB Tauris, 2010), Between Empires (Azimuth Editions, 2012), a critical biography of the Omani governor of the East African Coast, Sheikh Mbarak al-Hinawy (1895-1959), editor of Approaches to the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), and co-author and co-editor of Islam: An Illustrated Journey (Azimuth Editions, forthcoming).

Prior to embarking on an academic career, he studied and performed Western Classical Music, worked for OXFAM Canada, the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, the Government of Ontario and the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto. He has volunteered extensively in the Ismaili community. Between 2014 and 2016 he curated six exhibitions at the new Ismaili Centre Toronto. The most recent, ‘Memories of Stone: Landscapes of prayer, death, and commemoration in Bosnia and Herzegovina’ was co-curated with Velibor Božović, a scholar and photographer resident in Montreal and Amila Butorović a graduate of McGill’s Institute of Islamic Studies and now at York University.